Patti gave us a great theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #33 – Nature. I love nature and our frequent travel allows me to take many photos of nature.

In this post, I feature photos taken from two trips representing two ends of temperature in nature.

My brother John and his wife Peggy visited us from Hong Kong. We went on a bus tour to Yellowstone. Yellowstone National Park preserves the most extraordinary collection of hot springs, geysers, mud pots, fumaroles, and travertine terraces on Earth. More than 10,000 hydrothermal features are found here, of which more than 500 are geysers.

Types of Hydrothermal Features

There are five types of hydrothermal features readily visible in Yellowstone:

Geysers: Hot springs with constrictions in their plumbing, which causes them to periodically erupt to release the pressure that builds up.

Hot Springs: Pools of geothermally heated water.

Mudpots: Hot springs that are acidic enough to dissolve the surrounding rock. Typically, also lack water in their systems.

Travertine Terraces: Hot springs that rise up through limestone, dissolve the calcium carbonate, and deposit the calcite that makes the travertine terraces.

Fumaroles: also known as steam vents. These hot features lack water in their system, and instead constantly release steam.

Amy‘s theme this week for Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #31 is Landscapes. I included some photos of natural landscape and architecturally designed landscape.

I took this photo on the Alaska trip when our train passed by Hurricane Gorge, Alaska. They named it because the wind could go 150 miles per hour. The train slowed down for passengers to take photos from the bridge. The Hurricane Gulch Bridge is a 918 feet long steel arch railroad bridge and is 296 feet above the Hurricane creek. It is both the longest and tallest bridge on the entire Alaska Railroad.

My trip to Hong Kong and Japan was filled with unexpected experiences. Even though I grew up in Hong Kong, nothing is the same as the place I left it years ago. During our nine-day stay, we were accompanied by family members to go places. I found all these places new to me except remembering some of the street names.

I only include some photos of a few places we visited..

Kowloon Park is the largest park in Hong Kong. I couldn’t believe seeing flamingos there.

I came to Portland, Oregon in the US as a graduate student some forty years ago. It was November that year when I saw snow for the first time through a high ceiling window in the hallway of a meeting room. I jumped up and down and shouted, “It’s snowing. It’s snowing.” The local students walked by me and grinned. They might think, “What’s so exciting about snow? Silly.”

A month later during the winter break, I went with a group of students to Los Angeles and sat in the sun on Christmas day.

After graduated with my first master’s degree, I went to Seattle Pacific University to do my second master’s degree. That winter, Seattle welcomed me with 7 inches of snow. I was so excited and made a snowman with my leather gloves on my hands. Nobody told me that the leather would turn hard and stiff when it gets wet. I ruined the nice leather gloves.

I don’t do too well in cold weather, the weather in southern California seemed to agree with me and that is where I have stayed since finishing my study in Seattle.

My daughter is living in Portland, Oregon. She knows I love snow even though my body feels better in a warmer place. There was a heavy snow two years ago. The first thing she did was taking photos and sent them to me.

As far as southern California, it feels like summer is the longest season year round with a teasing winter and hair line period of autumn and short and sweet spring. The weather has been moderate besides the thunderstorm a couple weeks ago. I took photos of my garden today and have some beautiful flowers to share with you. Before I do that, just want to show you my baby hummingbird.

The baby hummingbird is eight months old. He is doing well and flying further away from the kitchen window. I know that the baby is not able to fly 900 miles straight to Mexico for winter, but I wasn’t sure if the parents were going. It’s December and the parents are still around. It seems like the family will stay for winter.

Baby hummingbird used to perch on the palm tree in the center of the photo. A month ago, he started to fly further from the feeder to the eucalyptus tree on the left.

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About me

Miriam Hurdle grew up in Hong Kong where she went to college and worked for five years before coming to the United States. While in Hong Kong, she taught Chinese as a Second Language in Hong Kong Baptist University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for three years. She was also the Director of Children’s Department at the Asian Outreach where she published four Chinese Children’s books.
Miriam Hurdle came to the United States for her graduate studies. She received her master’s degrees in Christian Ministry from Portland Seminary, Counseling from Seattle Pacific University, and Education Administration from California State University, Los Angles. After teaching in California public school for fifteen years, she was promoted to a school district administrative position. She went on to do the postgraduate studies and earned her Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from La Verne University in California. Dr. Hurdle continued in her administrative position for ten years before her retirement.
In her retired life, Dr. Hurdle enjoys doing volunteer counseling, reading, writing, blogging, singing, drawing, watercolor painting, gardening, photographing, and traveling. Dr. Hurdle is married to Lynton Hurdle and has one married daughter and one granddaughter.